Troll Lord Games

Treebore wrote:
I like this one far better than LL, ordered it in HC too. This one reminds me of my own copy far better than anything else has, and I like how he did several of the tables better, and I like a number of the alterations he did. In other words, I think he did the "truest" adaptation of the RC out of all the OSR versions. Plus he added in far more of the Immortals material, something I always felt the original was lacking on.

So now I can retire my "collectible" copy and use this.

I ordered a copy of Dark Dungeons(softcover, cause I'm poor)

I've wanted to pick up a copy of RC for some time now, but the quality and/or price of those I've seen for sale have stopped me.

I have never "bought" any of the other clones up to this point. DD and LL are my favorites so far. This most likely because I started with the OD&D + Greyhawk supplement.

I just can not get all excited about S&W, I sort see it as a bit of revisionism - I never played OD&D without the supplements back in the 70's and I do not know of anyone (outside those who played in the original campaign) who just used the 3 LBB's back in the day. Opinions expressed are solely those of the (drunken) poster and in no way intended to mean that any fun had playing any version is invalid.

Wizards let the cat of out the bag when they released the d20 SRD under the Open Gaming License. Various Wizards folks stated that they fully expected that people will make their own games out of the material. They probably were not expecting people to recreate older editions either in feel (like C&C) or near literally (like S&W, OSRIC, LL). The idea of progress in games rules was (and still) strongly ingrained in the industry.

Contained within the d20 SRD are nearly all the terms and concepts you need to recreate much of older editions of D&D. If you don't use feats, if you don't use skills, if you omit newer classes. What is left is pretty close to older editions.

This is 101 stuff to many there but what being missed is it about freedom. There is never "a little bit". Whatever you think of the retro-clones the fact remains that you and anybody else are free to create their own.

Now I realize some have reservations about the ethics of the matter. But the right to use all this material is not free as in beer. There is a quid quo pro in that you must grant to others the same rights as Wizards granted to you.

For example there are original material of my own in the Majestic Wilderlands that I could have made product identity. Much of it I explicitly released under the OGL (Section I Men & Magic and Section II Monsters & Treasure). I did that knowing that I have absolutely no control over what people will do with that material other than the fact they have to make their modification open as well. So it is not unethical for anybody to make whatever work they want off of my material as long as they follow the Open Gaming License.

To flip it back with the retro clones and and Wizards, Wizards gave the same permission for their d20 SRD as I did for my material in the Majestic Wilderlands. So as long as retro-clone follows the Open Game License then there is nothing unethical about it.

The freedom of the Open Gaming License results in the situation you see today. A bunch of people doing their own thing on their own dime resulting in a crazy mosaic of overlapping products. Frankly I wouldn't have any other way.

Finally if you want to sell commercially and make some money then you need to take in account some of the criticisms in this thread. My viewpoint that is the clone ruleset is largely saturated with S&W, Labyrinth Lord, and OSRIC as the big three clones. With C&C, and Hackmaster as related games with strong fan bases. Goodman's DCC RPG is a wildcard.

As a commercial publisher you will be faced with two basic approaches. The first do you want to do you own thing or the second do you want to take advantage of an existing customer base. The first means you will have to build your audience up like any other RPGs or supplement line. The second means that your product will have built in appeal to an existing audience but you will have to conform to an additional license and/or the expectation of that community. Only you can determined which is best for your product.

I took the approach of creating a Swords & Wizardry Supplement. I choose Swords & Wizardry Core Rules because of all the retro clones it is easily used as a toolkit for building a campaigns rules supplement. Plus there is a audience already for S&W products, and finally S&W is probably pretty close to a ur-D&D that easily translatable to all later edition. All these factors led to me adopting S&W.

In the end the most important factor is whether the Majestic Wilderlands is a good and useful piece of writing. The right ruleset may get you an initial audience but your prose has to deliver if you want to be a success.

Breakdaddy wrote:
This being a C&C forum and all, I would have to say that any negative comments expressed towards it should be kept to minimum and within the realm of constructive criticism to help improve the product and not disparagement of the product. That can be taken elsewhere. This is just a general observation, and not an indictment of anyone's specific post. I hope that it doesn't become necessary to point it out to anyone specifically.

Maybe we shouldn't tolerate people disparaging any game system? All this talk about clones verse derivative and debate about C&C not being a stripped down 3.0 clone or not (it is) Is pure mental m**tur**t, It might make you feel good but in end it is meaningless.

I have played C&C and I like it

I play LL and I like it

I have played S&W and it was ok

One thing they all have in common is that they owe their existence to one or another version of D&D and in some cases like LL and C&C multiple versions of D&D.

Slapping a task system on a stripped down 3.o doesnt make a game new or unique.

concobar wrote:
Maybe we shouldn't tolerate people disparaging any game system? All this talk about clones verse derivative and debate about C&C not being a stripped down 3.0 clone or not (it is) Is pure mental m**tur**t, It might make you feel good but in end it is meaningless.

I have played C&C and I like it

I play LL and I like it

I have played S&W and it was ok

One thing they all have in common is that they owe their existence to one or another version of D&D and in some cases like LL and C&C multiple versions of D&D.

Slapping a task system on a stripped down 3.o doesnt make a game new or unique.

I don't actually think that disparaging any game system is productive here, so we agree on a personal opinion level. On a forum moderation level, I felt the need to speak up in this thread. Of course, your last sentence could be seen as combative because it is obvious that you are saying that C&C is neither new (patently incorrect as it is a demonstrably newer game than the old D&D versions that inspired it) nor unique (this point certainly is debatable as long as civility is maintained).

concobar wrote:
Slapping a task system on a stripped down 3.o doesnt make a game new or unique.

That's not a new point of view. During the playtest phase we had a bunch of religious f!@#nuts who wailed and gnashed their teeth because C&C wasn't going to be AD&D reprinted. One of those f!@#nuts cried even more, because the SIEGE engine could be used as a skill system. Are you sure you're not him?

To be quite honest, the SIEGE engine isn't totally original since at least one skill-based game I know uses a system almost identical to it. But what is novel about the SIEGE engine is that it doesn't rely on a list of skills to use it, and it codified a system for handling all the odd things a player might want to do that in the past would need a rule on the fly to accomplish. No more saying to a player, "that's a thief ability and you can't do that" or "you can do that but at half your level". Now it's a matter of saying "is your attribute prime or not?" and going from there.

There's nothing stopping people from turning the SIEGE engine into a skill system, and in fact I know a few people on this forum have already done so. But your statement is disingenuous and demonstrably false, as proven earlier in the thread.
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Dude.... this thread is never going north again. CLOSED.